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Medical students' attitudes towards concordance in medicine taking: exploring the impact of an educational
J E Thistlethwaite1, D K Raynor, P Knapp
1Academic Unit of Primary Care, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, UK. j.e.thistlewaite@leeds.ac.uk
Background And Objectives:
Concordance has been suggested as a new way of describing the agreement about medicine taking during the consultation process. The aim is a decision on management agreed on by both doctor and patient. As such it has strong links with shared decision-making and patient partnership. In order to encourage doctors to adopt a concordant model, we need to foster a positive attitude towards the concept. We decided to investigate the attitudes of first and second year medical students towards concordance as a base for further educational interventions.
Setting:
The School of Medicine, Leeds University.
Methods:
We administered the Leeds Attitude toward Concordance scale (LATCon) to first and second year medical students at the beginning of the academic year, and to the same second year students after they had completed a written exercise relating to concordance.
Results:
The response rate was over 80% for each group. There was no difference in the attitudes towards concordance of the first years and the second years prior to the intervention. After they had completed the exercise, the second years' attitudes towards concordance improved by a small but significant amount.
Conclusions:
A paper-based exercise with questions focusing on concordance and based around cases appears to improve medical students' attitudes towards the concept. This exercise needs to be followed up with skills training and observation of role models in order that the attitudes of the students translate into practice once they are qualified.
